Agile documentation in my email

I don’t know if they have some search-engine magic going on (like Amazon) or (more reasonably) it was just a coincidence in that they were announcing their seminar a couple of months before the event.

It’s great to see that Agile project management is getting some attention in the documentation realm. At the same time, it’s important to understand that Agile isn’t something you can just bring back from a seminar or learn from a blog post.

When I first jumped into an Agile development shop as a tech writer with a solid background in plan-driven project management (a.k.a. Waterfall), I talked to a few Agile coaches and consultants. They all said a 5-year time frame was a reasonable expectation to move from a plan-driven to change-driven methodology. It might happen more quickly, or it might never happen, no matter how hard you try, because requires changing how many people not only view projects, but, literally, think about the world. That was 5 years of constant coaching and encouragement, by the way.

But, in any case, it’s good to see it’s getting some attention. You can’t get to the end of a 5-year transition if you never start.

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About the photo

This is a brown pelican that I watched while visiting the beach at Hilton Head Island, S.C. in Summer 2016. Pelicans fascinate me and I can't help but think that they enjoy gliding over the waves at least as much as i enjoy watching them.

For the photo geeks, I took this photo on June 19, 2016 using a Nikon 200-500 f5.6 zoom lens at 420mm at 1/1250 sec on my Nikon D7000 camera. The image was cooled down in Lightroom to give it a bluer-than-natural look for this web site.